


Mercury and the Tornado Twins

by Sheliak



Category: Amalgam Comics
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Family, Gen, Speed Force, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak
Summary: Before Mercury joined the Judgement League Avengers, he came back in time to seek help from Flash and the Scarlet Witch.
Relationships: Pietro Allen & Amalgam Flash & Amalgam Scarlet Witch, Pietro Allen & Iriskani
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Mercury and the Tornado Twins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



When Pietro Allen’s friends asked about the future, he’d make a joke out of the answer. “There’s a lot of future out there,” he’d say. 

But it was true. His time, the one his relatives Flash and the Scarlet Witch had fled, the one their foe Professor Kang hailed from… The future was vast. 

He’d seen little of it, himself. Mercury knew this time better than he did his own. 

Most metamutants’ powers manifested at puberty. _His_ meta-gene had activated far earlier—too early. He’d grown up at warp speed, unable to control his powers enough to slow down and talk to anyone else, kept sane by a decrepit VR machine and Iriskani’s telepathic company. 

He'd lived in the base of the Clan Legion, last heroes of a world that desperately needed them. Lived there—but he hadn't been a member, much as he'd wanted to be. That would've required him to slow down enough to understand his teammates. Aside from Iriskani herself, the only one of them he talked to regularly was their cousin Jenskani—and that was because Jenni could accelerate to his speed. Not often—that wouldn't have been safe for her, Iriskani told them. Not yet, not at her age.

Iriskani herself had been old when he knew her—her telepathic self was still vibrant and strong, but whenever he met her in person he was shocked at how frail she was.

Everyone else seemed to think she was invincible. In the brief windows of time he’d spent around them, when Iriskani managed to slow him down enough that he could understand anyone but her, Pete had learned that the rest of the Clan Legion had some weird ideas about her. “Daughter of time itself,” they called her. 

Whatever. She was family; that was all that mattered. 

Pete had spent practically all of his life in VR, the machine generating a world that could keep up with his perception. Iriskani was always at the edge of his senses, always sparing a bit of her thought (her speed, her time) to him. Sometimes more than a bit; she’d focus and join him, talk, show him something of her past. 

Some of those memories had been painful, as little as he’d understood it as the time. But some of them were wonderful: strange landscapes, brave heroes, old friends. 

“I wonder sometimes if I’ve sheltered you too much,” she said one day ( _moment_ ), as he ran through her memories. As always, she seemed to stand still, eternally just behind him, no matter how fast he ran. 

Pete had no idea what to say to that. 

He knew things were bad, out there; he knew that Iriskani and the people she’d gathered around her, the Clan Legion, were fighting someone called Ras-A-Pocalypse. He knew she was scared. 

But he’d been away in his own world during almost all of that. Once she’d slowed him down enough to help—only once—and things had gone pretty well then. He’d saved the day, he thought. (Okay, Jenskani had helped.) But Iriskani hadn’t been willing to do it again, no matter how often he asked her. 

He’d thought she was… well, not happy with the situation. She definitely wasn’t. But he’d been sure it was the best she could manage. 

“The machine is on its last legs, kiddo. And I can’t stabilize you for more than an hour or so without it. We can’t go on like this.” 

“Then what? If you can’t help me…”

“But there’s someone who can. Or rather, there were—two people.” The shuddering remnant of the VR field collapsed on itself, and they were in the past: tall straight buildings, striped roads, vehicles without any armor at all. Green plants, clean river. It looked… nice. But she wasn’t showing him this memory for him to look at the scenery. 

A man and woman, both red-haired—the one running like lightning, hair streaming like antennae behind him; the other turning the world around her red as she—as she _slowed down time,_ not just for one person but for the whole area around her.

Something Iriskani—Time’s Daughter, the closest thing the Clan Legion had to a leader—had never been able to do.

“Flash and the Scarlet Witch. The Tornado Twins. The Twin Cities’ greatest heroes, speedster and time witch. And they’re family, kiddo.” He felt her phantom hand ruffle his hair. “It’s time you met them anyway.”

“Why do you think they can help? If you can’t—”

“Flash’s powers are the closest to yours of anyone drawing from the Speed Force, and he stabilized them with his sister’s help. The Scarlet Witch can do things with time that even I can’t. They can fix this.” She sounded certain. 

“But they’re… a long time ago.” Dead, he’d almost said. But death was a word that he only knew from the most painful of Iriskani’s own memories; it was real to him only as something that had hurt her, many times. He wasn’t going to say it before she did. 

“Not a problem for a time witch like me.” He thought she must look like the young daredevil woman in the earliest memories she’d shared with him, before the reborn Ras-A-Pocalypse, even before Mr. Immortus and his camps. “I can send you back, home in on their signals in the Speed Force.” 

“Just me? Aren’t you coming too?” He didn't ask about Jenni. She would stay with the Legion, he knew; she was off on a mission now, or she'd have been here with them. If only to say goodbye.

“Even if I wasn’t needed so badly here, I’m too old to make the trip in the flesh. I’ll be able to visit you—send my thoughts down the timestream—but we won’t be in contact the way we are now. I’m sorry.” 

“…I’ll miss you.” 

“Me too, kiddo. Why did you think I waited so long to do this?”

He hugged her. She seemed to need it. 

Maybe he did too.

* * *

Time travel wasn’t what he would have expected

He’d expected the world to turn red, the way it did when Iriskani used her time powers to slow him down and let him interact with the rest of the Clan Legion. Instead, it shifted blue. 

She stood behind him, further and further away, wings arcing through space and time, even their tips falling behind him now. (He knew that was just her telepathic projection. Still. It was easier to pretend that she was still with him, that she wasn’t pushing him away.)

He saw the ocean fall and rise, saw cities long since crumbled to dust rebuild themselves and then inch down to bare dirt. An illusion, Iriskani had told him once, a representation of time. 

Faster, faster, faster—

The world turned— _flashed_ —white. And all of a sudden, he was there.

* * *

The Tornado Twins took a random relative from the future surprisingly easily, in retrospect. Then again, superheroes learned how to roll with things like that. The Scarlet Witch had taken one look at him and slowed his base speed down. (“Nothing permanent, just enough so we can talk properly”), and she and her brother had taken him out to dinner. As odd as their matter-of-fact response had been, Pete had been in favor of that idea; he’d been absolutely ravenous. (“Growing speedsters always are.”) 

Don “Flash” Maximoff, Scarlet Speedster, fastest man alive. Dawn Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, the woman who bent Time itself to her will and whims. Together they were the Tornado Twins, apples of the Twin Cities’ collective eye. 

They were legends. He hadn’t appreciated it properly, at the time. Anymore than he’d appreciated that chance… 

“Did she say how we’re related?” Flash had asked over dinner, that first night. (It was almost the first thing he said, after “Don’t call me Don—our parents didn’t think that one through. And it’s not like I have a secret identity to worry about anyway.”)

“Er. No?” It hadn’t occurred to him. He’d never figured out his relationship with Iriskani herself beyond “family;” if the specifics didn’t matter with that relationship, why would they matter with another? 

Apparently it wasn’t all that important to Flash either. He shrugged. “It’s probably complicated. There’s enough time travel in our family tree to confuse anyone.” 

His sister took over, waving her fork—as the only non-speedster in the group, she’d made her meal last the longest. “We’re not from around here either. Or rather, we are—but we’re from the ‘here’ of a few centuries from now, in between your time and this one. Our time was hostile to metamutants, but we wanted to make a difference anyway. In the end, we couldn’t stay. We saved the world—blew our identities sky-high in the process—and with Iriskani’s help, we came here and now to make a new start.” Dawn shrugged. 

“You _know_ Iriskani?” He’d thoughtlessly spoken at almost full speed. But Dawn was a time-manipulator and a speedster’s sister; she didn’t miss a beat, even if her own speech was maddeningly slow like everyone else’s.

“Back when she was younger, she didn’t have the control over her time powers that she does now. She didn’t even mean to be in that time to begin with. But she did know enough to give me some pointers.” Her fingers sparkled red, just for a moment, and she laughed.

He’d been bored and impatient and raring to run somewhere. But it had also been… nice, talking to those two. 

He wished he’d appreciated it properly, afterwards.

* * *

In the days after that, they’d fallen into an awkward pattern, him helping the twins out while they tried to stabilize him in time, bring his metabolism down to something that wouldn’t have him living out his life in under a decade. 

After Iriskani’s glowing recommendation, he’d figured it would be easy; they’d done this before, after all. Surely the Scarlet Witch could just snap her fingers and it would be done. But in practice, it apparently wasn’t that simple. 

The Scarlet Witch could slow him down for hours, even days, but not permanently. It was only with her help that he could interact with anyone _slow._ He could leave—he visited France once, and Wundagore another time, that was fun, even with the misunderstanding he’d had with the Knights of the Unknown—but he always had to go back to them when her power started wearing off. He’d never had to do that before—ration his time—and he didn’t like it. He felt trapped, in a way he never had in his artificial world in the future. It made him irritable, even with his cousins (they’d settled on that word, even if it didn’t feel quite right), even though they were both trying desperately to help. 

He even, reluctantly, had to turn down Firebird’s offer to join the Judgement League Avengers after he helped her and Apollo with that dust-up in Brazil. How could he join a team that regularly got stranded in space when he was tied to these two cities on the river? 

Dawn was frustrated too, of course. “I don’t know why I can’t make this work! It always feels like I have it, and then I lose the spell. I’ve done it before—why can’t I do it again?” 

“It took us a while too, remember?” her brother said once. 

She'd just just crossed her arms tighter and looked away. 

It had taken Pete a long time, looking back, to realize that she hadn’t just been frustrated at the lack of progress—she’d been worried for him. 

For his part, he hadn’t even thought to be afraid.

* * *

The Tornado Twins spent most of their time fighting the Brotherhood of Rogues, a cadre of mostly unambitious crooks who treated their rivalry as something of a game. Once the twins had even been invited to a Rogue party, a celebration for one of their own who was retiring from costumed crime; they’d taken Pete along, and it had been one of the best times he’d had since coming to the past. It had even been one of the Rogues who gave Pete his name. “Fast as Mercury!” he’d said, and even though Pete got the impression he’d been trying to show off his education to his friends, it had stuck. 

But Flash and Scarlet Witch also had a nemesis, of course; what hero didn’t? Theirs was Professor Eobard Kang, a man from the far future—though not so far as Pete’s—so obsessed with the ancient speedster heroes that he’d sought to become one of them. Instead, he’d set out on the path that would lead him to conquer time itself. Or rather, try to. The speedster and time witch had foiled him time (ha!) and again. 

But that was the thing about villains: just like heroes, they kept coming back.

* * *

The day Pete finally met Professor Kang started out like many others. He was patrolling with Flash—less because he needed the help than because his cousin wanted to keep an eye on him. At first it had been fun to spend a bit of extra time together; now he was starting to feel smothered. 

“I was perfectly fine on my own in Europe—”

“Except for almost blowing up the Knights’ base?”

“Almost! It didn’t happen!” 

They were interrupted by a loud boom, and for a moment Pete thought, _I guess the mountain really did blow up,_ before he remembered that that was half the world away. Both of them spun to face the sound. 

There was a cloud of smoke rising over the other city, as if something had indeed just exploded. 

“Trouble,” said Pete, at the same moment Flash said, “Dawn.” And they were off.

* * *

They arrived in unison. 

The street was in ruins, though empty of other people—Dawn must have sped them up enough to give them time to evacuate. 

“You see if there’s anyone still trapped in there, Mercury. I’ll help her with Kang.” 

“No! I can help—”

“You can help by—”

The Scarlet Witch, headpiece gone and red curls in her face, interrupted them. “They’re all out, and I need _both_ of you here with me.” 

Exactly what Pete wanted to hear. “Roger that,” he said, and charged into battle. 

He heard Flash’s sigh behind him as he did.

* * *

Fighting Professor Kang, Pete quickly learned, was _way_ harder than fighting the Brotherhood of Rogues. Against a foe who had speed powers of his own, there was no time to show off, or fix mistakes, or make mistakes at all. Flash had to save him twice before he figured that out, and in the back of his head, he wondered if that was why the twins hadn’t wanted him patrolling on his own. 

The world turned red as the Scarlet Witch used her metamutant power to slow time around them—for the whole world except her and Pete and her brother. Then she sped them up on top of that. Pete felt like he was made of lightning, like his blood had caught fire. He’d never been this fast. 

It wasn’t enough. 

Kang was laughing. “You see? I have transcended your—“ He broke off as Pete managed to land a blow, and then blew him across the street with a shockwave. 

Annoyingly, Kang was still laughing as he picked himself up and dusted his clothes off. 

“I see something of myself in you, boy. What, didn’t you know? Someone’s been keeping secrets…” He broke off coughing as Flash created a momentary patch of vacuum in front of him, throwing him off balance and stealing his air for a moment. But after a moment, he continued his speech, still staring at Pete. “You’ve been having trouble slowing down, have you not? Perhaps that’s my legacy. Your time isn’t anyone else’s, and the sooner you accept that—”

“Sure. I’m from the future! But this time’s pretty cool. People here—”

“You think the humans will accept you? Boy, I have seen your future. Your whole life will be spent running away from their hatred unless you join me!” 

“So what? I’m going to spend my whole life running anyway. I might as well decide for myself where I’m going.” 

“Brave words, my boy.”

“They’ve accepted us,” Flash said, almost casual. “Everyone knows we’re metamutants, and the Twin Cities don’t care. They’ll treat him the same.”

“So you say. But I have seen time’s winding ways, and I know where your future leads should you continue to side with humans—”

“Better the humans than you!” the Scarlet Witch shouted, blazing red with her power. 

“Ungrateful fools! I saved your lives when your own people rejected you, and yet you choose their petty ancestors over me—“ 

This time, the shockwave was aimed at Dawn. 

Flash ran to push her out of the way, just as he’d done earlier for Pete. He didn’t see the follow-up attack. 

Pete did. If he could just get there in time, do for Flash what he’d done for him—

Apparently he couldn’t. 

This once, this first time, his speed failed him. Kang stretched time around him, and it was like running through molasses, with that damned laugh still in the background. The shockwave reached Flash before he did. 

And apparently it wasn’t just a shockwave, either. 

His cousin fell to the ground, spasming, vibrating, radiating _wrongness_ through time in a way that made Pete’s connection to the Speed Force ache in sympathy. Unstuck in time.

* * *

Kang was gone. Maybe he was too scared of the Scarlet Witch’s wrath to keep fighting. Maybe he’d just gotten what he wanted. 

Dawn was kneeling by her brother’s side, time frozen around her as she exerted her power to the fullest. But that was only a stopgap measure; she couldn’t fix the damage, only keep it from getting worse. 

Pete did the only thing he could think of. He reached out through his old link with Iriskani, followed that connection up the timestream, and called for help. 

And she came. Trailing wings back to the future, blazing with power—he could see, now, why the Clan Legion had made so much of her, why they’d followed her through such suffering and seemed convinced that she was more than human, more than metamutant. 

Even though her eyes were so tired. 

“You can help, right?” He was desperate, he knew. 

“I hope so, kiddo. But even in our future—there are limits to everything. I’ll do my best.” 

She knelt to pick Flash up—time sparking around him, past and future tangled, and oh, he was seeing that through her eyes. (If she wasn’t shielding that from him—if she couldn’t concentrate to do so—then it really was bad.) 

And then she was gone, flying back to her body, carrying a near-dead speedster in her arms. Their connection faded as she concentrated on keeping a dying man alive, and Pete felt her recede from his mind, from the Speed Force around him. 

Pete collapsed to the ground. All he could think of was his heartbeat, impossibly slow and steady, and the empty space where his cousin Flash had just been.

* * *

His heartbeat stayed slow, after that. It was the breakthrough he’d been waiting for all this time. 

Somehow, his metabolism had finally stabilized. The world around him still seemed impossibly slow, but Pete’s body wasn’t racing so far out of synch with it that he would age to death within the decade. 

They weren’t sure what had done it. Maybe it had been one of Kang’s attacks; maybe it had been Dawn freezing time, or his own desperate burst of speed. All they could say was that he was safe, now; they’d saved him. 

All it had taken was his cousin’s life. 

Not that he knew that, really. Flash would have been dying if he’d stayed here and now; maybe in the future Iriskani could help him, or one of her allies could. 

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

* * *

Dawn’s friends—locals, other heroes, aliens, even a few semi-reformed villains—flooded into the cities as they heard the news, offering condolences, help, support.

Flash was right, Pietro thought: these people love them. Here and now. 

Two of the visitors were Pete’s new friends Firebird and Apollo, who were apparently Dawn’s old friends too. And after Firebird hugged her and Apollo awkwardly offered the League’s resources towards finding her brother, they renewed their offer to Pete. 

“I think you should do it,” Dawn said. “See more of the world, of this time. And they’re good people.” 

“What about you? The Rogues—”

“The Brotherhood of Rogues has been quiet since my brother…” Dawn trailed off, and she shrugged. “Maybe they’re mourning too.” 

Maybe the risk of death hadn’t been any more real to them than it had been to Pete. 

If he’d taken it seriously from the start, would he have worked harder, fought harder, found some way to save Flash? It was the first time he’d really been tested, the first time someone had truly been depending on him—and he’d failed. 

Everything came back to that, these days _hours_ minutes.

Slow down and say it properly.

“Dawn, I’m _sorry_.”

“It’s not your fault.” She sounded like she’d said this before, many times—maybe to herself. “Kang already had it out for us already. And my brother and I have been through bad times before, kiddo.” For a moment, she looked like Iriskani, that same power and determination. Then the resemblance was gone. “And in our line of work… dead isn’t always _dead._ ” 

There were those red sparkles again. 

But despite that show of bravado, her eyes were still sad when she looked at him. He made up his mind then. 

She had her friends and even, in a way, the Brotherhood of Rogues; she didn’t need the man who’d failed to save her brother to stick around and keep reminding her of that failure. 

And Pete couldn’t bear being there, where every person and every building reminded him of Flash. 

The JLA was a new beginning. And he swore that he wasn’t going to fail them the same way.

**Author's Note:**

> Since Mercury doesn't appear in _JLX Unleashed_ , I like to think that his solo series begins around then, in which he returns to the future with Iriskani, sees Flash again, and finds out just what his connection to Professor Kang is... 
> 
> _JLX_ left it ambiguous which DC characters had been amalgamated with the Maximoff twins to create this 'verse's Flash and Scarlet Witch. I picked the Tornado Twins, Don and Dawn Allen. 
> 
> The Clan Legion = the Clan Askani + the Legion of Super-Heroes. And Jenskani is a combination of Jenni Ognats (XS of the Legion of Super-Heroes) and the minor character Jen Askani. 
> 
> The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Rogues' Gallery seemed like likely candidates to form the twins' Usual Suspects, and they had names that fit together well. 
> 
> I have far less excuse for merging the Challengers of the Unknown with the Knights of Wundagore. In my defense, they both have mountains! (Also, the combined name sounded cool.)


End file.
